


that burnt-rubber, trashed-tire smell

by carlemon



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dream Pack Blue, Established Relationship, F/M, Implied/Background Relationships - Freeform, Power Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2019-01-05 06:40:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12184884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carlemon/pseuds/carlemon
Summary: –And, god, somewhere along the line he’d made a home in her or she’d made a home in him– he’d walked right in and tossed his tacky kicks over her fucking doormat, or something, like he’d metaphorically done to 300 Fox Way and she’d let herself let him in, like he’d let her do the same to him.Blue's the one who finds Kavinsky in the wreck, because she always is.





	that burnt-rubber, trashed-tire smell

  
Blue is screaming when she finds him. (Or: when he finds them, really; when the Mitsu flips clean over the motorway barrier and down the hill, when through the fire and the smoke she sees a skinny little flash of white tumble out of the wreck and _howls_.) Half past four, a sticky Henrietta night thick for sticky, stifling, silence, and she’s _screaming_ , each footstep hitting the mud a little deeper than the one before it, little legs moving too far, too fast, for the rest of her body.  
  
Uncharacteristically cumbersome, Skov steps out in front of her, arms spread wide, trying to slow her down, _(”Babe, fuck, babe–”)_ and she barrels through him, slapping away Swan’s hands when they come 'round her in something verging on a rugby tackle. She clears the highway barrier with one powerful leap, and then she’s tumbling down the hill too, mind going a mile a minute, the ground a hard, unforgiving, blur coming up to meet her. She throws her wrists up before she can smack into it face-first, heaves herself off the grass, keeps running. Shards of broken glass press into her worn-out soles. Vaguely ahead of her, in the lap of the hill, the skinny little lick of white sprawled over the black grass and dead ground twitches and she heaves out a dry sob.

“Bastard!” she calls at it, bewildered by how badly her voice cracks. “ _Bastard–_ ”  
  
It’d been a quarter to three when she and the boys’d headed out to look for him; half past three, _goddamn_ him, worry humming in the streetlight and K nowhere to be found, the space in Henrietta that he filled hollowed out and empty, like an excavation or a grave, dark and fetid with the dead stuff of fireworks and catastrophe and dreams. A quarter to three, when they should’ve been home and drinking rum and cokes out of Mrs. Kavinsky’s ceramics or playing pool in the den or fixing to slather Lynch’s lawn in a generous helping of week-old trash once the day broke, and they’d headed out to wait for him, all the whispered fretting of a half-hour ago coagulating in the dash, tongues heavy and burnt in mouths dry as cotton. Wondering, wondering. Worrying _scared_.  
  
(“ _Shit_ , ’s great–” Skov’d said, pretending like he wasn’t striking for a forest fire, with a pause in between that’d suggested _tenderness_ , care and contemplation and all else incongruous to his boombox, _babe-I-got-another-subwoofer,_ presence, “–that we’re doing this, man. That we’re all out here for him. Bet he’d love it. Fan-fucking-tastic.”) (When that, a bare blasphemy compared to the specific brand of crassness she'd evolved to tune out, hadn’t evoked the specific brand of snarling contempt he’d hoped for, he’d brushed the bow of his lips with a bruised, bloodied, knuckle, and, because Blue apparently wasn’t frustrated enough, peered down at her, mischief a skinny, tooth-full, crescent marring his otherwise perfectly acceptable face. He’d wiggled his fingers in the way that made and continues to make Blue certain she could outperform his raven-breasted football team with the speed which which she shrunk away, painted on a smile half-thrillingly K’s and half his own, and crooned: “but, fuck, if you don’t look _cold_ , babe. Warm you up?“ because– of _course_ he had, _he had to_ , and she’d turned away and spat out something ornery she didn’t mean, curling her fingers into his and squeezing soft and consolatory when Swan’s eyes left the two of them. Swan’d been pissed off, because he was always pissed off around Skov and if it didn’t get worse at night it sure as hell got worse without K to hook his fingers into the corners of his scowl and croon at him to _smile, sweetheart_. Swan’d been pissed off and Jiang, ever-wary, had had Proko’s head in his fucking lap, in the RX-7, so it’d only been her and Skov left to consider where K’d fucked off to and deal with Swan’s endless bullshit.)

(“Fucking adorable,” he’d hissed when Blue’d twisted ‘round Skov to sneak, surreptitiously, a glimpse of herself in the wing mirror, checking the plum of her smile; “Skov, man,” he’d spat, like it was her fault K’d all but _evaporated_ a night back, “tell her she looks _hot_.”)

(When the Mitsu’d flipped clean over them, over the barrier, god _damn_ , to erupt in a splutter of flame and shattered glass, plastic smashed and metal torqued, he hadn’t looked so pissy, only drained, the only things dark or sharp or angry about him the bags under his eyes, red as figs and as the bruises marring the apples of his wan, wan, cheeks: a palette of pain courtesy of Jiang; a study in juxtaposition. Not angry or even malicious, only quietly, unspeakably, tired as Blue shook and screamed and clawed, desperately, her way out of Skov’s grasp.) (She’d wanted to hit him, and Skov, and Jiang, who’d stared, horrified, as the Mitsu spat coal-dark smoke into the night.) (It’d been four-twenty. Prokopenko’d been too tired to point it out, asleep, as always, his head in Jiang’s lap as the latter whipped his head ‘round to Blue and asked, voice, cracking, _if she fucking saw that.)_

Had she, indeed, fucking seen that or had it been a fever dream? It was, she’d reflected, briefly, drily, always hard to tell with Kavinsky.

She clears the last two hundred yards to him –to the car, to _him_ , to the _car_ ; god, it was so hard to tell with him, maybe they’d always been the same thing, maybe that’s why it kept showing up in the garage, all shiny and new when each night he’d take it to hell and back– with shocking speed, flat soles slapping against the grass. “ _K!_ ” she gasps, when she slips against a slick of mud; “K,” she prays, dread sharp in her throat. The wreckage looms ahead; it’d been a flash of red and white against the dark, dark, grass from atop the hill but up close it’s something almost artfully abstract: a tire coming to a gentle stop one side of her, a crooked door, ripped clean off its hinges, at the other. All of it groaning softly and painfully.

Filling her lungs with smoke, Blue shudders, taking an uncertain step forward. She doesn’t realise how deeply she’d been biting into her lip ‘til she tastes blood, feeling it paint a lazy trail down her chill. Scrubbing her palms over her eyes, she sucks in another breath, then heads toward the wreckage, forging her way through it with an approximated calm, Orla telling her blithely she’d aged seven years in seven months in her left ear to the tune of a far-off owl.

Henrietta’s always worst at night. Picking through the mess, (just another of many, she figures– all Kavinsky, definitely) (put like that, she can almost believe that everything’s sort of okay) she remembers all the drama of a month back, all the wondering whether or not to tell Kavinsky how much sage they’d used to try and wipe him away, only to smudge and stamp him even deeper into 300 Fox Way’s just-fitted carpet. In the end, figuring he’d only enjoy it, she’d let it go.

He hadn’t.

Almost stupidly, she thinks: _I’ll tell you, if you come out. If you crawl out right now, K– I swear. I promise._ Hunkering down to roll an unidentifiable, sheared-off chunk of plastic and rubber out of her way, she lets that thought hang in the air for a moment. After a pause, she whimpers: “Please?”

Unsurprisingly, there’s no response, only the incessantly quiet, sinister sounds of melting plastic and wrecked metal, subtly melodic in the early-morning quiet. Shouldering her rapture, Blue rolls the second tire out of her way, forging deeper into the crash, thinking on faith and lack of, the hymns Prokopenko sung from deep in his throat when drunk. She sees Persephone’s tarot cards with each blink, Calla’s wide-eyed and hapless horror burned into the backs of her eyelids– remembers Maura showing ‘round K’s card in brief flashes of disbelief and parental concern, then Prokopenko’s, then Jiang’s, as Skov and Swan, the inseparable twosome, watched with lazy heathen snake-smiles in the background, two feet planted in the clutter of 300 Fox Way and the other two anchored to K’s world of fire and frenzy, defiling both by proxy and dragging Blue with them with her hands bound behind her back when they left.

Hands fluttering over the latest length of wreck, she spits out a furious sob. In the dark, she can’t tell where the Mitsu begins or ends, where to step without getting a faceful of broken glass, where to touch without burning her hands. In the dark, she can’t help but think about the basement they’d all be sitting in if K hadn’t stole and vanished into the night . Maybe they’d be bitching, or competing with fantastical cars on whatever crappy video game Morris had left a half-year back, when it inevitably got too quiet outside to race for real– maybe talking dreams, _making_ dreams– maybe passing around a joint, Proko’s big hand over her knee, testimony to a care to ask first that was unbefitting of him, and Jiang’s nails scoring clumsy love-hearts into her shoulder– fitting together, definitely, all the half-hearted lacklustre bitching about Child and Whelk and the Dick Ganseys of a world wrapped in dreams that Blue wouldn’t know and wouldn’t ever no longer rich-boy boasts but mere bullshit to fill the air with.

She’d been okay with that– god, she’d been _okay_ with it through it all, alright with the prospect of K running circles around her, flaunting brief glimpses of that world of riotous promise and possibility ever-expanding. She had been less okay with all that coupled with him running off the face of the earth.

And now– now she figures nothing's _okay_. Dragging her hands down her face, she steps back off the wreckage. Her breath is shaky; in a voice reserved for prayer and Jiang, Blue reminds herself, “Nothing’s gonna be alright, Sargent. Nothing’s gonna be alright, ever again,” kicking a fucked hubcap off into the darkness.

She almost believes it and believes it well enough to head back up, to bitch at Skov to _come down, you bastard, come look for him,_ until, trapped in the lap of the hill at half past four in the morning with all the noise and fight sucked out of her, she collapses onto the third tire, thinking and mourning and pissing herself off as the feel of Kavinsky teases her from somewhere deeper in the grave-dark, grave-cold wreckage.

She’d wanted to endlessly kick him in the shins ever since she’d met him, with a fervour bordering on religious. He’d noticed, taken to relishing it, taken to fucking her over endlessly for it, making gods out of impossible things and the both of them. And, god, somewhere along the line he’d made a home in her or she’d made a home in him– he’d walked right in and tossed his tacky kicks over her fucking doormat, or something, like he’d metaphorically done to 300 Fox Way and she’d let herself let him in, like he’d let her do the same to him. It was, it _is_ , interdependence, she realises; mutual parasitism and the biology of something inhuman and unspeakable, _godlike;_  symbiosis with something insidious and– unapologetic and innately _Kavinsky_ to it.

He’d slithered his way into her life so Blue’d kicked her way into his and–

Hell, she wants to weep for it.

The sallow Henrietta night stretches out around her and the eviscerated body of the Mitsu, the mess of it rendered a god of her in the moonlight, or alternatively, she of it. Her lips don’t move, but it’s her voice that wheezes out a choked and desperate, “fuck-goddamn, Sargent, pull it together–”, because it’s only her down here and she’s alone and desperate and feeling like she’s got her fingers in a Henrietta grave, digging it out, looking for–

Life.

She’s unsure of just when she’d made the decision to curl up, little body pulled into itself, but now she’s unfolding, clearing her throat, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her palms. “Hello?” she tries, choking on her own voice. And then, “K?”

Amidst the quiet and smoky, unforgiving, dark, there’s a flash of movement, absurdly out-of-place, slick and white and _familiar_ as the Mitsu’s trashed spoiler. Blue watches it trace a weak arc through the air, silent, and then–

–and then she _yells_ –

–and she’s– white-winged, _effervescent_ , racing over the bumpy ground and the mud-slick and the tire-treads where the Mitsu’d bounced off the hill and gouged deep furrows into the dirt– running and racing and _shrieking_ as breath knocks about, sharp, in her burning lungs and the others roar and bicker at each other and her far, far, above– running and running and running until her heel hits a torn-off tire, the _fourth_ tire, and she topples and tumbles and slides to a graceless stop, landing neatly in the lap of the valley and smelling of burnt rubber and ash and Kavinsky.

She can’t punch herself for not seeing him, _feeling_ him, earlier: he’s half-hanging out of the driver’s window of his wrecked car when she reaches him, cast entirely in shadow; her mouth is a grim line stretched taut and wary but his is a big white wolf’s-smile, all bloody and shredded, dark as his smashed shades and her plum grin. There’s a skew to him that suggests broken ribs– shattered bone and torn sinew. She doesn’t quite realise how sharp and scared and tearful her breath is coming, how it’d _been_ , until she’s pulling him carelessly from the wreckage and he’s laughing like a bastard, less a boy stuck in a car crash and more the approximation of a boy tattooed onto– _into_ a car crash. 

“K. _Kavinsky_ , god–” She wills her breath calm and her hands still as, frantically, she brushes a slick of bloody hair off his forehead, out of his smashed shades, more for herself than for him. He doesn’t say anything, only laughs raucously, not ‘til she bites out a shuddering, meaningful, “You _bastard_ ,” into his gaunt, gaunt cheek and he _howls_ , tongue peeping in brief flashes from his fucked-up smile.

“You know it,” he leers. Then, with a grin that doesn’t quite reach his eyes: “Fuck me, sweetheart. Where’re my boys?”

Blue slings a glance over her shoulder, up top, where Jiang’s pristine sneakers flash promisingly down the hill and Skov-and-Swan’s combined silhouette flickers uncertainly in the headlights of the RX-7. Something big and spindly wavers over the barrier, shouting madly; Proko, she figures, awake at last now that he isn’t needed. "Gone, you asshole,” is her reply. “Drove off an– an hour back. Sorry. Move– move, if you can. Your _arm._ ”  
  
He cocks his head as far as he can without taking his head clean off, but complies, wriggling one arm free in a way that proves that she’s right, he’s been broken into little pieces, he probably can’t even _feel_ it. "Yeah?"

Blue nods distractedly. Biting the inside of her cheek, she works his shoulder free off a vicious spear of plastic, digging her fingers a little too deep into his collarbone when they linger against her will, barely thinking to relish his half-pained, half-delighted hiss. “They thought you were dead. It’s only me, K. I’m _all you’ve got_.”

They share a glance, a sneer, ‘til Blue starts snickering and cannot stop, fingers working frantically over the decimated shape of him, pressing tearful, furious, despair into his bruises; writing ruin into ruination. “End of the line, prick. You’re stuck with me, now. And you almost left– you could’ve left me here. All alone. Without a ride.” She laughs and laughs jubilantly, ‘til she can feel salt sneaking into the corners of her mouth, ‘til she can feel the plum smile go rictal and sour and only then does he get it, a hint of softness tempering the hooks of his smile and the noiseless Henrietta night as, meticulously, she slides her hands into the wreck, into his _ribs_ , pausing only briefly to furiously scrub the wet from her eyes with the back of her hand.

She half-expects laughter. If not, then a pick-up line, any sleazy _something_ to play down the night. “Babydoll,” is what he coos instead, timbre laced with equal parts characteristic dark and viscous cheer and– something else. “Didn’t think you _cared_.”

Blue tugs him out with a bark of despair, splaying out his deathsnare embrace, laying him out like a crucifixion onto the mud and the ruin and the blood. Somewhere between her fingers in her hair, desperately brushing away the worry, and the approaching echo of Jiang-and-Proko’s tearful shouts comes the plum smile again over her tear-wrecked face, smudged up against his pale cheek as she shifts up against him and sighs a smoker’s breath through her teeth. She _shouldn’t_ , she knows; god, _does she know,_ they all know, but–

_But._

“Yeah,” she says. “Neither did I.”

**Author's Note:**

> blue gets shit DONE in this relationship, in every relationship, i love blue


End file.
